Rock is dead

I'd describe myself as a music lover who hates music.

To elaborate, I'm a big fan of the art of songwriting, the qualities and nuances that make a good song. But I hate music.

Like every other aspect of our culture, it's been overrun by the corporate agenda. And don't wave your indie rock at me, buddy. That's just a bunch of nobodies aspiring to someday be corporate.

Here's the deal- record companies want music to be like fast food. A new flavor every month, but basically just variations of the same old shit. Same freeze-dried and reheated ingredients reconfigured into a slightly different format, and paraded before the public as the "next big thing". But to keep record sales up, there has to a new "next big thing" all the time. Artists are like toilet paper. Used, flushed, forgotten, tear off a new sheet.

In order to accomplish this- music has to be homogenized as much as possible. To do this, you start by only signing bands of limited skill and little to no ingenuity. Put them all over the radio, so it is the only music that people in areas without a rich musical culture will be exposed to. Because of the lack of talent and originality exhibited by these bands, the music is easy to imitate. Then get the instrument companies to start making cheaper, poorer quality instruments, so they can sell more units, spend less on production, increase profits, spend more on advertising, sell more units, etc. Now, becoming a musician no longer requires a large financial investment, or the long term commitment needed to become proficient. Anybody who can hold down a job at Burger King for two weeks and can learn one or two chords now has what it takes to be a mainstream radio darling. So when the talentless dumbasses on the radio break up, OD, get uppity with their label, or just start to slip in record sales, the record company can go to any city in America, or the world for that matter, and find twenty bands that sound just like them.

Voila! The next big thing. And an endless supply of 'em. A self-sustaining assembly line, or a factory farm. Every local band is just livestock waiting for record companies to turn them into fast food for the American public to to be consumed, digested, passed and flushed.

Case in point- Nu-metal. I honestly can't grasp how people can tell any of these bands apart. This is the textbook example of the process I just described. I work at a nightclub, and one night one of the soundguys was playing the CD by Evanescence (one of the "best" that numetal has to offer, if record sales and radio airplay are any indication) on the PA. After a while, my manager asked if the same song was playing over and over again. Not in a joking way either. He was convinced the CD player was stuck in a loop, and even checked it out to make sure it was working properly. Turns out, It's just that every Evanescence song sounds exactly the same, save for the two or so songs intended to be "singles".

This is part of the problem. Music is written with singles in mind, not albums. Come up with a couple of catchy tunes, and the rest can be filler. People will hear the song on the radio, like it, buy the album, then lose interest. Because when you listen to the radio, you're becoming fans of songs, not fans of the band. This approach to music ensures the short shelf life of musical careers necessary to keep the assembly line going.

Case in point- rehashed 70's rock and rehashed 80's new wave. Same as numetal, but throw pretentiousness into the mix. This crap is supposedly more refined than the rest because the artists' influences go back more than eight years. In reality, it's the same formula. It's a genre based on a handful of successful bands with a similar, collectively distinctive sound which can be imitated with a low to moderate skill level. As I often say, if I wanna hear something that sounds like the Stooges, I'll listen to the Stooges. And if I wanna listen to something that sounds like Duran Duran, well, there's not much likelihood of that ever happening.

I'm using rock as the example here, because that's what I'm familiar with. However this really applies to all music across the board.

I blame punk for this. At the time, it was a meaningful expression of disillusionment with the existing musical and political culture. But the philosophy of minimalism was simply co-opted by corporate music, and made them more powerful than ever. As much as I love the Ramones, it was they who set the precedent that you didn't need talent to be successful in music, and that is the reason music sucks now.

So if you're tired of shitty music, do like me. Stop listening to it. Not just the shitty music, all of it. You'll be better off, trust me. Read books. Or just sit and think. Believe it or not, using your brain instead of drowning it out with constant background noise is actually good for you.